Thanks for sharing. And for the really great question.

Q: Is this the kind of revelation that I should share and discuss with her directly, or process on my own?

A: My suggestion is to keep practising/processing on your own for a while before you share it with her. Get personally acquainted with this revelation. Try it in different situations. Savour it. Anchor it in yourself solidly before you share it with her. Then – when you’re ready – you can share it with her PROVIDED you are committed to being unattached to her response.

PS – As you practice your leadership in the relationship, be aware of the line between “dark” and “light.” (More about this in The Hero Principles ebook).

PPS – Congratulations!

Been with my girlfriend for 2.5 years now and she’s currently taking a class that is really challenging her. I’m helping her almost daily, taking up a substantial amount of my own time and energy with the homework, and every single time she reaches this point where she gets upset and talks seriously about skipping class/dropping out of the class, and I play the supportive boyfriend role and talk her down.

Well, one day I kinda got freakin’ sick of it. I raised my voice a bit and said very firmly that the problem isn’t her ability at all. The problem is the way she tries to do all of the work for the whole class all together at one time (working for a little bit on one piece, then randomly hopping over to another piece, etc) instead of breaking it up in small pieces. (I had told her this many times but it hadn’t really sunk in)

Now, she’s a bit hot tempered, so I was expecting her to angry and start yelling, but her reaction was quite the opposite. She mellowed out 1,000 percent and from that time has been approaching the work for the class in a much more sensible, practical sense. Since then she’s really been showing that she finally got what I’d been trying to tell her.

The thing that I realized is that with her I’ve fallen into the ’supportive’ role with her virtually 100% of the time. I’m always trying to be sweet and nice. But that left her craving my masculine leadership to the point that in the void of said leadership, she would just get upset/angry. Maybe on a subconscious level she saw my lack of leadership as my own lack of confidence in her ability. I don’t know if that makes any sense or not. I’m still sort of piecing this all together in my head.

The awesome part about all of this was that when I suddenly realized this… I dunno, this feeling of appreciation for this unintentional lesson she just taught me about being a man came over me and I loved her a little bit more than before.

Here’s the question I’m curious to know: is this the kind of revelation that I should share and discuss with her directly, or process on my own?

Jayson